Post by T.J. West, Syracuse University

If we are, indeed, living in the Golden Age of Television, we can also be said to be living in the Golden Age of Tudorphilia (or at least a golden age, as the Tudors seem to bubble to the surface of popular consciousness periodically). From the runaway success of Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl to Hilary Mantel’s award-winning and critically lauded books Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, the exploits of Henry VIII and his six wives, as well as everyone caught in the crossfire, have re-entered the popular cultural landscape with a vengeance. We seemingly cannot get enough of the Tudors. In this essay, I would like to explore some of the aesthetic and ideological functions of two particular iterations of this obsession with England’s most (in)famous dynasty, Showtime’s The Tudors (2007-2010) and the BBC and Masterpiece Theatre’s Wolf Hall (2015), the latter based on Mantel’s two books on the life of Thomas Cromwell. However, rather than chiding these films as mere escapism or condemning them for distorting Tudor history (both of which may be true to some degree), I would like to argue that they can actually tell us a great deal about not only how the early modern appears in contemporary popular culture, but also why it appears and what it can tell us about how we engage with the historical past.

Of course, both The Tudors and Wolf Hall partake in a long tradition of re-imagining the Tudor court for the contemporary imagination. Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) solidified the image of Henry as a villainous glutton who devours both chicken legs and wives with the same abandon (this image is due, in no small part, to the corpulent persona assiduously cultivated by Charles Laughton). Other actors would bring different levels of complexity to the role, including Richard Burton’s brooding and Byronic persona in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and Eric Bana’s gruffly and dangerously handsome interpretation in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).

Cue Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who strides onto the set of The Tudors chewing scenery and shedding clothes. Exuding his signature mix of sultry sexuality and brat prince antics, Henry as Rhys-Meyers portrays Henry as less the erudite and thoughtful scholar-king and more the unruly id that constantly threatens to overwhelm the bounds of the narrative designed to contain him. His excessive and sometimes capricious sexual desires cause chaos at the personal, social, and political levels, leading to more than one ignominious death on the scaffold.

While men do certainly fall victim to Henry’s mercurial changes of temper, it is the women who truly bear the brunt of his sexual whims. While The Tudors contains many scenes of female nudity, the camera often focuses just as intently on the anguished expressions of Henry’s various consorts, particularly Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn (portrayed by the immensely talented Maria Doyle Kennedy and Natalie Dormer, respectively). The first two seasons in particular draw conspicuous attention to the ways in which female bodies and sexuality serve the double-edged function of allowing access to power while also becoming their weak points, for in the world of The Tudors—as in so many other dramas that appear in the cable television world—women’s bodies remain a commodity that can be easily acquired and just as easily cast aside once their “usefulness” is expended. The many close-ups of Katherine’s face registers the emotional and mental anguish she encounters as a result of her own eclipse by Anne, and the camera also focuses on the latter’s face after her eventual fall from grace. While the series alludes to the momentous political and social changes that surround the events of Henry’s court—the annulment, after all, eventually became part of the broader Protestant Reformation—these momentous changes are mapped onto the suffering female body.

If bare flesh, sexual romps, and the anguished female body stand as the aesthetic markers of The Tudors, dim lighting, claustrophobically tight spaces and sinister whispers are those of Wolf Hall. While less explicitly concerned with the rampant sexual escapades of the Tudor dynasty, this latter drama remains just as invested in digging into the grim, dark underbelly of Tudor glamour. Death and a general precariousness of life are a consistent feature of this tightly-plotted vision of Henry’s reign. Death here can come in many forms, whether as the sweating sickness that claims the lives of Cromwell’s wife and daughters within the first episode or the despair that takes hold of Cromwell’s mentor Cardinal Wolsey as he tumbles out of Henry’s orbit and into ignominy.

While Damian Lewis may not have the smokey, pin-up good likes of Rhys-Meyers, he does have his own brand of handsomeness, and it is worth noting that he actually looks like Henry was supposed to have looked, with his fiery-gold hair and fair skin. Likewise, Lewis makes for a more charismatic and likeable Henry, not falling so easily into the realm of sultry camp that always threatens the seriousness of The Tudors. However, it is precisely this charisma that makes this Henry so dangerous and that makes him serve as the perfect foil for Mark Rylance’s more dour and dark Cromwell. This Henry can turn from laughing and light-hearted to dangerously lethal in the blink of an eye, his radiant and sunny personality a mask covering a truly sinister persona just awaiting its chance to strike. As the series progresses, we see that caprice strike down several men and, while Cromwell has so far managed to rise above the bodies, anyone who knows their Tudor history knows that, inevitably, Henry’s sexual desires will once again destroy one of his most faithful councilors.

Clearly, both The Tudors and Wolf Hall remain invested in depicting the Early Modern world as dangerously and exotically other than the world that we currently inhabit. In their own ways, each of these series attempts to tame that dangerousness—to render it intelligible and contained—through the moral codes of melodrama (The Tudors) or the explanatory power of narrative and “literary” historical fiction (Wolf Hall). At the same time, however, they also contain within them a (perhaps unwitting) acknowledgment of the perilously undisciplined nature of both the past and sexuality. While both appear to have been tamed by the discourses we have designed to discipline them and to render them intelligible, there always remains something about them that slips away from us, unknowable, ungraspable, and ultimately ineffable. It is precisely these elements that make the Tudor period so unquietly pleasurable to watch, reminding us of the perilous Quixotism of history.

Part of this, of course, has to do with the stiffness of Gordon; McKenzie lends a measure of gravitas and almost deadening seriousness to the future police commissioner.  While this allows him to, for the most part, maintain a measure of moral certitude that may appeal to the more conservative members of the audience, it also makes his plotlines somewhat plodding and predictable at times.  And poor Bruce.  While Mazouz invests the future Batman with a certain pristine appeal–slightly nuanced by his recent attempts to wrest control of his company from the obviously-villainous Board–he is overshadowed not only by the major villains, but also by his own child co-star Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova).

It is also a matter of space. The police station is, unsurprisingly, painted in grim colors, rendering it a stultifying space that lacks a sense of liveliness or energy. Compare this to Fish Mooney’s bar, which is always full of lush, saturated colors and musical performers who, while perhaps not talented, nevertheless provide a bit of local color (and who could ever forget Carol Kane’s atrociously wonderful performance)?  The bar serves as a world of color and barely restrained sensual energy, a welcome relief from the bleak and grimy cityscapes that show us a Gotham crumbling under the weight of urban decay and the organized crime that permeates every corner of the metropolis. Mooney’s bar also sits at the center of almost of all of the major plots that have emerged among the various crime elements of the city.  Whether under the control of Mooney or of Penguin, the bar is the epicenter of the criminal life of this grimy city.

It’s probably no accident, then, that between them, Jada Pinkett Smith and Robin Lord Taylor get the best lines of the series.  The appeal of Fish Mooney, however, goes beyond her quips; it seeps into every aspect of her persona. It might be going too far to suggest that Smith is a scenery-chewer, but there is something decidedly lush about the ways in which she delivers her lines, even when faced with the imprisonment and torture that have characterized her more recent storylines. It’s thus more than just being interesting. Fish Mooney is compelling; we as viewers actually care about what happens to her.

Like the other powerful women of color that have appeared on television in recent years (most notably, Viola Davis as Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder), Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney has elevated being an understandable and compelling anti-heroine into an art.  Just as importantly, she also contains a great deal of queer potential, the pleasures of her performance gathering just as much significance as the actions that she takes within the drama.

When it comes to queer pleasures, however, no character provides as many as the Penguin.  From his kooky mother (Carol Kane), to whom he remains steadfastly loyal to his own penchant for the theatrically excessive, Penguin has emerged as one the queerest characters currently on television. Largely eschewing the tough-as-nails, hard-boiled male personae of Gordon and the world-weary patriarchal authority of Don Falcone (John Doman), Penguin succeeds precisely because everyone assumes that simply because he does not perform hegemonic masculinity as well as his fellow male characters. He succeeds because, like any queer, ludic trickster, he knows exactly the places where the dominant rules don’t or can’t hold up, and he exploits them to the fullest.

Through its aesthetic choices, Gotham encourages its viewers to confront the uncomfortable thought that evil, chaos, and queerness are infinitely more interesting, compelling, and even believable than the forces of good, law, and the boring straight world.  For a series that started out as a backstory for Batman and Jim Gordon, it seems to have fully embraced the idea that people really want to see, and what they really enjoy, are the villains who steal the show every week.

Part of this, of course, has to do with the series’ diegetic location. As Staci Stutsman has suggested, Parks and Rec participates in a long-standing television tradition (also seen in other media) of painting the Midwest as a land of backwards, obese, parochial nitwits.  At the same time, however, I would also suggest that it has to do with the series’ fundamental political project.  While Parks and Rec has, rightly, been lauded for its fundamentally liberal/progressive point of view and generally optimistic perspective on politics, this has always been tinted with a bit of (perhaps psuedo)-intellectual snobbery, which invites viewers to engage in the contradictory feelings of somewhat patronizing affection for the “ordinary people” of Pawnee, as well as a related feeling of head-shaking frustration at their unwillingness/inability to think critically for themselves or to be grateful to their eternally-beleaguered public servants.

One of the series’ running gags typically involves one or more of the townspeople leading the others into a rousing chant of whatever inane suggestion has been put on the table.  This has included, among many truly absurd suggestions, changing the town’s motto to focus on a man’s goldfish (Crackers, the orangest goldfish in Indiana).  The town meetings are almost inevitably full of unbridled chaos, a populist nightmare in which reason, sanity, and all of the traditional elements of good government and reasoned argument are quickly (and, it must be admitted, humorously) abandoned, leaving Leslie and her fellows shaking their heads in resigned despair.  In an interesting twist, in the final season the townspeople finally join with Leslie in her desire to call Gryzzl out for its invasion of the town’s privacy, a show of solidarity and support as shocking to Leslie as it is to us in the audience.

Nor are these good citizens susceptible only to their own chaotic desires, for the people of Pawnee are notoriously prone to the two forces that, in the populist frame of mind, almost always work against the people: big business and big media. From the successful attempt to recall Leslie (orchestrated by the business interests that she relentlessly curtailed) to the rantings of such media personalities as Joan and Purd and the increasing ubiquity of tech giant Gryzzl, fast food chain Paunch Burger, and chronic polluter and exploitative candy company Sweetums, Pawnee is a microcosm of American politics and culture writ large. While the series makes it quite clear that the corporations and media personalities bear the brunt of the blame, it also does not shy away from pointing out that the citizens of Pawnee share a measure of responsibility in their own manipulation.  The notoriously fickle and pseudo-libertarian people of the town seem to revel in their own state of exploitation; they might be exploited, but damn it, it’s because they want to be. And no government do-gooder is going to take away their right to fast food and sugary candy.

And yet, Parks and Rec is not always so condemnatory of its small-town voters. As Ben put it so memorably way back in the third season, the people of Pawnee may be weirdos, but they’re weirdos who care. Given that this series consistently validates and valorizes Leslie for precisely the type of caring that seems to be a prominent feature of so many Pawnee residents—right down to the woman who wants the slugs removed from in front of her house without killing them—this compliment crystallizes the series’ attitude toward the average American voter.  It is, in some ways, an optimistic point of view, suggesting that, given the right type of encouragement and service from their government servants and intellectual betters, the American electorate, fundamentally good-willed at heart, can be guided and encouraged to doing the right thing for everyone.

Right up until the end, Parks and Rec seems quite undecided how it wants us, its presumably educated viewers, to view the American electorate.  Do we see them as wacky yet lovable weirdos all too easily led astray by the malevolent and self-serving forces of the media and big corporations?  Even a seemingly innocuous and fun episode such as “The Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show,” which showcases all of the things the series utilizes to show that there is still some good in the world—Andy’s ludic energy, April’s endearingly bizarre morbidity, Leslie’s ruthless good cheer—also features ads from Paunch Burger (encouraging people to indulge in their food or else risk being labeled a “nerd”).  And, even in an otherwise optimistic and upbeat finale, we still see a citizen of Pawnee express profound ingratitude toward Leslie and company, even after they went out of their way to fix a swingset at his request.

Yet even these signs of disquiet cannot entirely dampen the triumphant spirit that Parks and Rec leaves us with, as we celebrate with Leslie the unquenchable hope for a better and more just future, and the hope that we can all do our part to make it come to pass.

Lange’s recent television work traces back to the emotionally resonant HBO film Grey Gardens, a retelling of the famous Maysles documentary about the fraught-yet-loving relationship between the two Beale women, Big and Little Edie. Though Little Edie (Drew Barrymore) desperately desires fame on the stage and on the screen, she constantly finds herself drawn back to her mother, until both of them are at last trapped in their formerly grand East Hampton mansion, locked in a deeply pathological yet strangely resonant relationship. In AHS: Asylum, likewise, Lange’s Sister Jude stops at nothing until she has managed to imprison hard-hitting, lesbian journalist Lana Winters, only to eventually find herself a prisoner of her asylum, betrayed by the very monsignor she had once served so faithfully.

In both cases, Lange’s characters slowly slide from positions of independence and dominance into those of abjection, literally and physically cast out and isolated from the social world, typically as a result of the uncaring men in their lives. Big Edie of Grey Gardens, when faced with the rejection of both her husband and her lover, eventually decides to retreat from the world that has rejected her, staying in the crumbling mansion of Grey Gardens and preferring the ruins of its former glory to the harshness of the outside world. Sister Jude of AHS: Asylum likewise goes from the punishing and domineering matriarch of her domain into a prisoner of the very system she helped to create, trapped and ensnared in a dark cell, forgotten by almost everyone. Yet even she attains a measure of redemption, forgiven by the very people she worked so hard to keep in the asylum.

As this season of American Horror Story has unfolded, we have seen Elsa exhibit many of the traits of her predecessors, though Elsa is even more prone to violent changes in emotional state, wavering between (apparent) devotion to her “monsters”—the term she uses to discuss the other members of the troupe—and terrible fits of rage in which she threatens to destroy the life they have sought so hard to build.  And yet, for all of her cruelty, we as viewers also know that Elsa deserves some measure of sympathy, given that we know (even if some of the characters don’t) that she was brutally tortured and lost her legs as a result.  Of course, it remains to be seen just how far Elsa will fall in this season, but the odds are it will be pretty low, and she may not be granted salvation.

These texts clearly encourage the viewer to understand these falls from grace as not only deserved, but also as the logical extension of these domineering mothers’ own attempts to imprison their children into their own world. However, despite the fact that the narratives of these series consistently position us as viewers to condemn and dislike these dominating and destructive mothers, Lange’s acting style manages to inject a poignancy into these otherwise pathetic and destructive figures, the charming and quirky vulnerability oscillating uncertainly with the enraged scenery-chewing, consistently prompting the viewer to re-evaluate and reconsider their feelings about these characters.

Big Edie, for all of her flaws as a mother unwilling to let her daughter experience life outside of her care, nevertheless resists her sons’ attempts to remove her from the only space that she owns in her own right (even going so far as to assert that the only way she will leave the house is feet first). Likewise, she refuses to obey the stuffy social conventions imposed upon her by her dour husband. As viewers we may not entirely agree with all that she does; we may even grow frustrated with her. Likewise, Sister Jude (and many of Lange’s other AHS creations) begins as a ruthless tyrant but gradually reveals her depth, as we learn about her troubled past and the genuineness of her beliefs.

Lange’s acting style brings to mind the over-wrought, highly melodramatic acting personae of women like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, both of whom also became famous for their willingness to portray abject femininity and their ability to wring pathos from their viewers. Lange’s evocation of the styles and sensibilities of the classic era of melodrama, I suspect, is in large part responsible for the wide variety of complex (and sometimes contradictory) responses her characters evoke.  While this does not necessarily undo all of the damage that such representations bear with them, it does encourage us to consider more deeply and complexly the socio-cultural forces that grant these representations their purchase and to move beyond the more condemnatory mindset that most of these narratives typically carry with them.